The Magic Lantern and Moving Images from Another Time – The 400 year-old Awe-Inspiring Grandfather of CinemaMagic Lanterns

An American Exclusive Live Magic Lanterns Show imported from the Cinémathèque Française, featuring rare, prismatic and vibrant hand-painted glass slides moving across the giant screen accompanied by an original story written by Laurent Mannoni and Laure Parchomenko, with actor-bonimenteur Nathan Willcocks, harpist Liénor Mancip and foley-artist Zakaria Mahmoud.

The show will take place at the Byrd Theatre.

Example of One of the Hundreds of Hand-painted Glass Images To Come Alive on Screen
in the Byrd Theatre with Amazing Magic Lanterns imported from the Cinémathèque Française
Especially for The 25th Festival

About the participants

Laurent Mannoni

Scientific director of the Cinémathèque Française

Laurent Mannoni is the scientific director of the Cinémathèque Française (French Film Institute). He has written more than twenty books on cinema, including topics such as the origins of cinema, German Expressionism, Georges Méliès, Magic Lantern and Painted Film, and more. His most recent project, published in 2016, is titled La Machine cinéma. He is also the curator of numerous exhibitions, including his latest work: De Méliès à la 3D – la machine cinéma, which was in exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française until January 2017. His next exhibition will be of works by Georges Méliès and will be held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes during the summer of 2017.

Laure Parchomenko

Curator at the Cinémathèque Française

Laure Parchomenko has overseen camera collections at the Cinémathèque Française since 2007. In addition to her work as a curator, she had the opportunity of performing magic lantern shows with Laurent Mannoni using the exceptional material provided by the Cinémathèque Française: in Paris, in Turin, at the Musée du Louvre, and at many other locations.

Nathan Willcocks

Actor-bonimenteur

Tri-lingual, Nathan Willcocks has acted in more than thirty theatrical plays, notably in the United Kingdom with directors Marianne Elliott at the Royal Exchange Theatre (Martin Yesterday) and Ken Campbell (The Warp). In France, he played in The Yellow Rose directed by Jacques Connort which was also presented at the 2014 Avignon Theatre Festival. For television, he has been in shoots both in Spain with Cesc Gay and in France for the series Versailles and Missions. For the big screen, he has collaborated closely with the director Morgan Simon for whom he starred in Essaie de mourir jeune, nominated for a César award for Best Short Film in 2016 and the feature film Compte tes blessures, which was a prize winner the same year at the San Sebastian Film Festival. In 2017, Nathan Willcocks was recently cast in the first feature film by Woody Harrelson, Lost in London, which drew attention as single-shot-sequence film screened live in 550 cinemas in the United States this past January 19th.

Aliénor Mancip

Harpist

A tenured professor at the Departmental Conservatory at Châteauroux, Aliénor Mancip performs for a variety of venues, regional and national orchestras such as the Opera of Tours, the National Orchestra of Lyons, the Lucerne Festival Academy when directed by the late Pierre Boulez…
With a professional background as both a pianist and harpist, Aliénor Mancip earned her music degree from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris; she studied the harp under Isabelle Moretti as well as pedagogy. Passionate about chamber music, Aliénor plays regularly with different ensembles (a flute, alto and harp trio, and an English horn and harp duo…) for numerous festivals. Aliénor Mancip plays a Lyon and Healy harp.

Zakaria Mahmoud

Foley-artist

Zakaria Mahmoud, videographer specialized in music and writing is the foley-artist for the magic lantern show. He goes all out in his creation of complementary sounds to accompany the hand-painted glass slides in order to reinforce the phantasmagoria and further immerse the spectator in the spectacle.